He asked me out again as the class was about to start, while the kids were taking their shoes and socks off. The other mothers were watching us and I saw them whispering to each other as they made their way to the door of the sports hall, on their way to get hot chocolate from the vending machine by the changing rooms.
‘Just a Christmas drink.’ Paul deliberately placed his hands on his hips so that his judo jacket widened to reveal his smooth and over-muscled chest. I imagined him shaving it and felt sick.
‘Thank you, but I’m going to be busy.’
‘I haven’t even said when yet.’ He looked affronted.
‘I mean that Christmas is a really busy time for everyone, especially when there’s only one of you doing everything.’ I didn’t want to play the widow card, but I thought perhaps I could be excused on this occasion, given the circumstances.
He frowned and scratched his head. ‘Yeah, it’s just I’ve asked you more than once now and you said no then too. A lot of women round here would be hellish pleased to go on a date with Paul Jones; you probably don’t know that yet.’
I couldn’t help staring at him in disbelief. He’d really just referred to himself in the third person? ‘I didn’t know that – you’re right.’
‘No problem.’ He rolled up his sleeves and crossed his arms to show off his biceps. ‘Anywise,’ he continued, ‘I thought we could go down the pub on Christmas, Eve.’ He smiled widely, delighted at his own joke.
‘Very good, I see what you did there. My name is Eve and Christmas Eve.’ I forced a polite smile, and he chuckled, looking down at the floor modestly.
‘Well I’ve always been known for being funny-like too, Eve, you see? That and being international and three times national mixed martial arts champion, obviously.’ His smile vanished. ‘Which is no joke.’
‘Obviously. Well, it’s very kind of you to ask, but I’m still going to decline, thanks anyway.’
He frowned. ‘Ah c’mon, Eve. I’m getting sick of asking, and you’ve got to get out there again while you’re still young enough.’
‘I’m only twenty-eight.’
‘But you’ve got to have your own life. He’s not coming back, is he?’
My own smile vanished completely.
‘I know that might sound harsh,’ he continued, ‘saying it like it is about your dead fella, but I’m straight up and down. That’s good though, see?’ He pointed right at me. ‘I won’t mess you around, like. You’ll know where you are, and that’s a promise. Sometimes you need someone to tell it as it is.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Can I be “straight up” with you, too, then? It was only the six-month anniversary of my husband’s death yesterday, but even if it had been six years, or sixteen years,’ my voice started to strengthen as I spoke and carried across the sports hall, ‘I still wouldn’t want to go out with you. I don’t fancy you. Sorry.’
One of the mothers who had hung around to earwig stared at me in disbelief, as the other – with wide delighted eyes – gleefully grabbed her friend and burst out of the door to gossip.
Jones watched them leave, looked down at the floor again, and snorted. ‘All right. There’s no need to be like that. It’s just a drink, dahhhhling.’ He mimicked my English accent. ‘A word of advice, Eve. People round here don’t like airs and graces. You’re no better than anyone else, you know?’
‘I never said I was.’
‘You’re acting like it. You’re behaving like someone who thinks she’s much smarter than the person she’s talking to, and that’s not nice, Eve. There’s folks round here that don’t like English people looking down on them, moving in and taking their homes. It could get dangerous for a girl like you on your own. Did you ever think of that?’
My heart thumped. ‘You can’t possibly be comparing the local people – who have been nothing but kind to me since we moved here – with the Meibion Glyndwr protesters who burn down English holiday homes? Plus, you do realise that technically this town is English?’
‘We’re right on the border, love. I consider myself Welsh and I’m proud of it.’
‘You should be – Wales is lovely. But I’m confused – who are you saying is threatening me then, because it seems to just be… you?’
‘You’re obviously taking it that way, which is weird. I’m saying I could look out for you, if you wanted. People respect me.’ He shrugged.
I glanced across at my seven-year-old daughter who was watching us, waiting with the other kids to start, apparently listening to every word we were saying. ‘Again, thank you for the invitation, but I just don’t want to go out with you, Mr Jones, even if that does make me an unusual woman, or will mean that I won’t have your protection.’ I spoke clearly and confidently for Isobel’s benefit. ‘People should never be forced into something they don’t want to do.’
He took a disgusted step back. ‘Man alive, what are you on about now?’ He gave me a confused look then an amused leer spread across his face. ‘Oh I get it – you’re one of them as well, aren’t you? Keep your knickers on, you daft cow. Look, just forget it. You’re not all that, anyway, just so you know. I was only trying to be nice cos you’re on your own, like, but I’m not that bothered.
‘Come on you lot!’ He spun around on the spot and clapped his hands at his students. ‘Line up to start, please! Dyke.’ He casually threw the last insult at me over his shoulder as he walked away.
My mouth was still open as Isobel stood there uncertainly. I should have just taken her home then and there, but the ridiculous truth is, I didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want to make my little girl feel uncomfortable. The whole point of bringing her to the classes in the first place was to improve her self-confidence, help her make friends outside of school and give our Saturday mornings a focus that wasn’t the gaping, lonely and unbearable absence of Michael.
‘Go on, sweet,’ I mouthed and smiled encouragingly for her to join the others, to show her I was fine. She turned and did as she was told. I went and sat down on the wooden bench by the door, smiling brightly like I wasn’t ‘bothered’ either, even though, ridiculously, I wanted to cry. It shouldn’t have mattered what some idiot meathead said to me, but I suddenly missed Michael with such acute longing it made me gasp and I had to cover my mouth with my hands – making it look like I was coughing – to cover the sound.
I cleared my throat, determined to stay strong and not let Isobel see I was upset – or give Jones the satisfaction of realising he’d got to me. This would be Isobel’s last class. I’d tell him at the end we wouldn’t be coming back in the New Year. I’d just thought he fancied himself and expected everyone else to. I’d had no idea quite how unpleasant he really was. I wasn’t having a man like him teach Isobel.
As the lesson progressed, however, it became apparent that for all his insistence otherwise, Jones was pretty bothered by what had happened as well. He was much shorter than usual with the children, barking instructions at them, crossly insisting they weren’t doing the exercises and drills properly. There were only four of them in any case – perhaps that was why he was annoyed, too.
Towards the middle of the session, one of his teenage helpers from the adult class arrived to assist with some pad work. I had retrieved a book from my bag that I was pretending to read, but was glancing up regularly, anxiously waiting for Isobel’s turn to work one-on-one with Jones. I caught my breath as he got to her and she began kicking the pad he was holding, I could see him urging her to go harder. He wasn’t going to take out what had happened on her, was he? I watched as he leant forward and said something I was too far away to hear. Isobel stopped completely and stared up at him, bewildered. Shit – he was. I tensed and put my book in my lap. What was going on?
‘I don’t want to,’ Isobel said clearly, and I stood up.
She didn’t want to what?
But Jones just laughed, reached out and ruffled her hair. I was about to walk over when he beckoned the next child forward. Whatever had just happened during their exchange, it seemed the moment had already passed. I sank back down again slowly.
‘Dewi!’ Jones called over his shoulder, to his young assistant. ‘Come here a moment.’ I watched the boy run across obediently and Jones whispered something in his ear. Dewi nodded, hurried back to Jones’s pile of belongings, picked something up and sprinted to the emergency exit that led to the car park.
Satisfied that everything seemed to have settled down, I returned back to my book. I was actually pretty thirsty but didn’t fancy running the gauntlet of the two other mothers in the foyer. I couldn’t face the nosy questions but also didn’t want to make things worse. Least said soonest mended, as my grandmother used to say. Instead I tried to concentrate on reading.
So I didn’t actually see Dewi Roberts come back into the hall carrying the gun.
He’d left the emergency exit slightly ajar enabling him to just slip back in again. The children were doing shuttle runs by this point, up and down the hall. Jones had been shouting at them to go faster, but he suddenly yelled ‘COME ON!’ ferociously, and, alarmed, I looked up properly, to see he was holding a machine gun.
I’m almost certain that’s when I stood up again, in shock. The four children had stopped running and were staring at him, too.
‘Isobel says she “doesn’t want to” do pad work,’ he put on a mock whingey voice, ‘and none of you lot is even trying. This time – let’s see you RUN!’ He shoved the gun at his shoulder. One of the boys, Izzie’s little friend Adam Owen, laughed nervously thinking he was joking.
‘I said RUN!’ He looked down the sight and took aim right at them. Their expressions changed; they turned on their heels and fled – as he pulled the trigger.
The ‘pffft’ of the big, black gun firing, sounded exactly like a machine gun in a movie, only echoing eerily around the sports hall we’d spent the last six consecutive Saturday mornings in. As the first burst stopped, I could hear the children’s panicked bare feet on the badminton court floor, like fluttering birds, as they approached the barrier, turned and desperately ran back towards us, obediently continuing their shuttles as they’d been told. I looked wildly right at my daughter – and I remember this bit very clearly – she was already sobbing with terror.
‘Pfffffffttttt!’ The gun began again and someone screamed. It might have been me. I couldn’t be certain though. I started to run towards her, but my shoe caught on the strap of my bag lying at my feet. I stumbled, crashed to the floor and looked up to see one of the three small boys scrabbling through a break in the plywood barrier sectioning off our area from the other badminton courts behind. There was enough of a gap, running underneath, to reveal his bottom. He’d sat down and was cowering to take shelter. Jones laughed – laughed – and pointed the gun right at him. I heard another cry but twisted back to Isobel. She was about to pass in front of us, less than twenty feet away. The gun stopped again and so did she. Adam, still running, accidentally thudded into her, knocking her off balance. I heard the squeak of the skin on her toes against the shiny wooden floor and the slap of her other foot go down as she tried to steady herself, but instead fell to her knees.
‘Get up!’ Jones shouted. And he took aim right at her.
I was almost standing again but I couldn’t get there fast enough. Nothing went in slow motion. It was horrifyingly quick. Adam had frozen and was staring down at Isobel in fright.
‘Pffffffttt’ went the gun again, as the last remaining boy deliberately dived in front of my daughter to shield her. They huddled together on the floor, alongside each other, hands about their heads, the boy’s small arm protectively around my little girl’s back. I heard them yelping as the shots made contact with their bodies.
Then silence. Everything stopped. The whole episode had lasted less than ten seconds.
My breath was rasping and my body started to judder as I rushed over to them, trying to make sense of what I was looking at, what I’d just seen. He’d shot them? Actually shot them? Isobel wasn’t moving. My daughter was not moving.
Jones turned to me and pointed behind me, at the floor. ‘You’ve dropped your book.’ I stared at him, horrified, still unable to process what he’d just done.
He scowled with annoyance. ‘Calm down. It’s not real. They’re just pellets, not bullets. Even the kids know that.’ He turned abruptly, walked back over to the pile of pads next to his bag, and carefully propped up the gun. I looked back at the children who were slowly, miraculously, unfolding like flowers. They were white, shaking, and all three of them, without exception, were crying. It had felt just as real to me, too.
‘Get out from behind that fence,’ Jones shouted at the boy still sat out of sight, who re-emerged, weeping.
‘On your feet for bows – all of you.’
The children scrambled into a line. It was as if they’d been caught in a hailstorm – hundreds of tiny white balls rolled around at their feet.
The children bowed at Jones. ‘Sensei.’ They managed, just about audibly and Jones nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘See? You can do it properly. Do it first go next time, all right? I’ll see you all after Christmas. Remind your mams and dads to bring the money to the first class back, please.’
Dismissed, Isobel ran and flattened herself onto me, wrapping her arms round my legs so tightly I almost wobbled over as she buried her face in my jeans, just as the sports hall door opened and the two oblivious mothers walked back in laughing and chatting, holding their purses, and chocolate bars for their children.
I bent down to whisper to Isobel: ‘Where’s your coat?’ – even looking around for it before I realised it didn’t matter. We needed to get out. Paul Jones had gone mad. He had a gun. He said it wasn’t real, but what if that was a lie and he had real bullets in a bag back there? Should I shout? Should I tell the other parents who hadn’t seen what had just happened to get the children out now! The father of the boy who had jumped in front of Isobel arrived; Adam’s mother and the other woman were frowning down at their sons, beginning to notice they’d been crying – all of the children were accounted for. I looked at the gun again and I began to shake. We had to leave. I had to get Isobel out immediately.
I reached into my pocket for my keys as one of the little boys ran up to Jones, holding a Christmas gift that his dad had unwittingly given him to hand over to the teacher who had just shot him. I watched Jones take the wine as the boy turned and dashed away, before Jones looked up and right across at me, clutching the bottle tightly round the neck. I pulled Isobel from my legs and almost dragged her in my haste towards the emergency exit doors at the back of the gym. My ankle throbbed as I pushed down on the cold, metal bar to release us. Isobel shivered involuntarily in her judo kit and stopped on the threshold.
‘I’ve got no shoes, Mummy.’
We’d left them behind.
‘Should I just walk anyway?’ She looked up at me, red eyes still wide with fear.
‘Quick! Jump up into my arms.’ I reached out and braced for her whole weight as she put her arms around my neck, leapt up and buried her face in my shoulder, clinging on like a baby monkey. I panted as I staggered towards the car, determined that my ankle would not give way. Forget my bag, her shoes – everything.
‘Here,’ I sat her on the bonnet as I fumbled with the keys, repeatedly glancing behind me in fear, half expecting Jones to come bursting out of the doors behind us waving the gun again. ‘Get in quickly.’ I bundled her into the back seat and roared out of the car park as fast as I could.
We swung onto the main road and Izzie blurted: ‘I’m sorry, Mummy. I didn’t mean to make him angry! I’m sorry. I was trying to kick as hard as I could.’
He’d shot her. ‘It wasn’t your fault, baby. What did he say to you when you were doing the pad work? You told him you didn’t want to do something?’ That had actually happened? He’d just shot her?
‘He wanted us to kick harder. He’d been mean to you,’ Isobel cut across me, ‘and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to do it any more.’
‘What did he say to you though, darling?’ He held a gun to his shoulder and he aimed it at her.
‘He said: “none of your dirty English ways”.’ Isobel’s voice was soft and small.
Everything froze – crystallised for a second – then I actually felt the explosion of rage within me. Blood thundered against my eardrums and my ribcage. I swerved left and stopped suddenly in front of the Red Lion pub. The bastard, the mad, racist dangerous bastard. She was seven! SEVEN.
Running round to the back seat, I flung the door open. ‘Quick, darling! Jump in my arms again.’ She did as she was told and, this time, I barely noticed her weight as I wove my way unsteadily up to the front door, shoving it violently with my hip, praying that it would be open. It wasn’t – but it rattled enough in the frame for a shadow to quickly appear behind the glass as keys threw back in the lock.
The fifty-something landlord appeared clutching a tea towel, staring down at me holding Isobel in my arms.
‘Can I use your phone?’ I must have looked wild, deranged almost. ‘There’s a man at the leisure centre with a gun. He’s just shot at the children. I need to call the police.’
He’d obviously seen enough drama in his time not to ask stupid questions, instead just rushed me through the back, to a cold red-tiled hall adjoining the bar and the lounge where the payphone was attached to the wall between the ladies toilets and the closed pub kitchen door.
I set Isobel down who flinched at the chill on her bare feet, but didn’t complain. As I dialled 999, the landlord disappeared into the ladies loos, and came back with a hand towel, which he laid down at Isobel’s feet.
‘Stand on that, bab.’
He and Isobel listened as I told the call handler I needed the police. My daughter’s instructor had fired a gun in the sports hall. No, my daughter wasn’t injured, I didn’t think, but I wasn’t sure if he had any other weapons. Yes, he’d deliberately fired at the children in the enclosed sports hall. He’d said they weren’t working hard enough, his assistant had gone out to his car via the emergency exit and come back with a big, black machine gun and Jones had shot them. He was still there now with other parents and children.
‘It was Paul Jones who did it?’ The landlord was frowning as I hung up, white with fury and shock.
I nodded.
‘Well, there we go then,’ the landlord sighed, without passing any further comment. ‘You both need a drink.’
He took us back through into the empty bar urging us not to trip on the hoover lead snaking invisibly across the brightly patterned carpet, sat us at one of the tables in the window and gave Isobel a small bottle of orange juice with a straw and me a brandy. The winter sun was shining in through the glass so brightly it illuminated slowly swirling flecks of dust – hitting the highly polished mahogany table top with such a powerful glare it made me squint as I turned to Isobel to inspect her, gently turning her small head this way and that looking for marks or any obvious wounds.
‘My arm and my toe hurt,’ she confessed, lifting up her right foot.
I gasped as the landlord reappeared over my shoulder, and we both looked at Isobel’s big toenail – which was already turning black around a small circular blast hole right in the centre of the nail bed. An unmistakable shot wound.
‘Let me see your arm?’ I slipped her jacket back from her right shoulder to reveal her white vest and three small, angry and perfectly circular welts on her skin. One was bleeding where the skin had broken.
‘Ah – that’s pellet marks, they are,’ the landlord said.
‘In an enclosed area! Can you believe it?’ I exclaimed quickly. ‘He could have blinded them!’
‘I tried to run faster, Mummy,’ Isobel apologised again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ I repeated. I pulled her to me and stroked her poor little head.
We heard sirens approaching and a flashing blue light went whizzing past the window. Good, I thought savagely, picking up my brandy and downing it in one. The back of my throat burned, and the landlord straightened up.
‘That’s it then. Chris Davies is on his way to sort it out. When you came in here a moment ago saying someone had shot people I thought it was Hungerford all over again.’
‘Thank you for these drinks,’ I interrupted hastily. I didn’t want Isobel to hear the horror of what had happened only three years earlier in a small, close community just like this one.
‘You must have thought so, too,’ he added kindly. ‘Thank God it wasn’t, eh?’
‘I didn’t know what to think, to be honest. It all happened very fast.’
I was already replaying the events in my mind – Jones holding the gun… and me just standing there. Why hadn’t I moved more quickly? I started to feel sick. It wasn’t the unaccustomed brandy on an empty stomach at that time of the morning, but horror that I hadn’t been fast enough to leap in front of the children. I watched someone shoot at my daughter and I didn’t protect her. A boy instinctively did it instead – the Vaughan child threw himself in the line of fire rather than me.
I had failed Isobel.
Nearly thirty years on, that self-disgust at my own inadequacy has not gone. Friends have been kind each and every time I have returned to that morning of 22 December 1990, asking myself how I could have let it happen to her.
I tripped – they tell me – it wasn’t my fault. The police assured me it’s a very natural reaction not to move at all, but rather to freeze completely. None of us know how we will react in moments of extreme trauma apparently, until it actually happens. Other people said that was complete rubbish. Of course a parent would move to protect their child: ‘I don’t care what anyone says, if there’s a gun pointing at my little girl or boy, I’m getting in between it and them, no questions asked.’
I tried to apologise to Izzie the night it happened – tried to explain how I’d fallen but that I would always be there to protect her: ‘Most of all, darling, I don’t want you to feel worried that it will happen again. It was really scary, but it wasn’t a real gun, Iz. It was a toy one.’
‘Then why did the police shoot him?’ She was sat up in her bed, pale, with wide eyes.
I swallowed. ‘Because they thought it was a real gun. Mr Jones was waving it around in the car park after we left, the police told him to put it down and he didn’t. They were worried he might hurt people.’
‘Do the police shoot everyone who doesn’t do as they’re told?’ Her voice went a little higher with fear.
‘No, no darling. The police are good. They look after us.’
‘But Mr Jones died when they shot him because they used real guns?’
I nodded, with difficulty.
‘Because we phoned the police and told them he had a gun?’
‘Yes, Izzie.’ I forced a smile. ‘But you’re safe now, darling, try to snuggle down and go to sleep.’
This being nearly thirty years ago, we weren’t offered counselling or anything like that. The best I had to offer Isobel was that she could come and get into my bed if she woke up feeling scared.
‘Will Mr Jones go to Heaven?’
I could see where she was going with this – what she was afraid of – and it broke my heart all over again.
‘No, my angel, he won’t. Daddy will be safe, don’t worry.’
She visibly relaxed. ‘And I don’t have to go to class any more on Saturdays? Because Mr Jones is dead?’ She was only trying to piece it all together, to make sense of it, but her childish factuality unnerved me, even though I have always encouraged her to be honest and open.
‘Yes, because he’s dead.’
After I called the police they went screaming round to the sports hall. An angrily defensive Jones – loading his kit into the boot of his car – refused to hand over his weapons, then pointed the gun at them and forced the police back. A sixty-minute siege followed, culminating in him being shot dead in the leisure centre car park. The month-long inquest afterwards determined that the two police marksmen who killed him acted lawfully, believing the gun he was waving around as he walked towards them was the real deal. The police repeatedly reminded everyone at the inquest that although all of the guns found at his flat afterwards were discovered to be replicas – in addition to the pellets found scattered in the sports hall – the marksmen involved believed the weapon was genuine, that they were in danger and so asked Mr Jones to put down the gun – which he did not. Jones’s parents were on the scene by that point, begging the police to let them talk to their son, insisting it was a replica weapon. They weren’t allowed to approach him – in Hungerford, one of the many people Michael Ryan had shot was his own mother.
I saw Mrs Jones in the street, six months after that fateful day, just before they moved away from the area. By then the whole town had read every detail of the inquest in the papers. They all knew Jones had asked me out for a drink just before the lesson had started. I’d said no… he was angry, Isobel had cheeked him – not my words – and he eventually lost his temper. Mrs Jones knew it was me that had called the police. Everyone did. She stopped on the opposite side of the street and stared as I hurried past her. She could have shouted something, abused me. But she didn’t and somehow her silence was worse. Without saying a word she made it crystal clear she thought I was responsible for what had happened to her son.
And if truth be told, I do sometimes feel a sense of disquiet about the phone call I made from the pub that morning. I don’t doubt in principle it was the right thing to do – when someone shoots a gun and people are injured, you call the police.
What I’ve never discussed with anyone, however, is that I saw the pellets on the ground – I knew it was a replica gun and I didn’t say that to the 999 call handler. I said Jones had shot the children – which was true – he did. But did I deliberately omit the fact that the gun wasn’t real because I was angry with Jones and wanted him punished? I just don’t know. I couldn’t say for certain.
No one else behaved as if I was to blame for Jones’s death. In spite of his warning to me that Izzie and I were regarded as unwelcome, the town couldn’t have been kinder to us. They wrapped us in their arms. We were looked after. Meals were made and brought round, reporters were shooed out of our front garden by cross, protective neighbours – we were supported. Timothy Vaughan rightly became a local hero for jumping in front of Izzie; it was a tragedy that kept the town busy for months. The press cast Jones as a psycho in waiting and regardless of his personal political stance – such as it was – everyone agreed that it was madness to take a gun into a class full of children, replica or not. Eventually the chatter quietened down… but it didn’t stop completely. Significant local events are never forgotten, they become woven into the fabric of the community – sometimes becoming luxuriantly embellished as time passes, or as has happened in our case, the stiches can appear simplistic and old-fashioned when viewed through modern eyes. Especially eyes that are desensitised by the violence everyone carries around in their back pocket these days, on those wretched tiny screens no one looks up from any more.
Mary Morgan was in the wool shop only this afternoon, talking about it all when I arrived to choose some buttons for Izzie. Busily shaking her head that next week would mark the twenty-seventh anniversary of the shooting. I could tell she was settling in for a gossip, not having heard or seen me come in, as she stood by the till with her back to the door.
‘Thing is – Paul Jones was always on the edge – even when we were at school, wasn’t he?’ She was addressing Ann, the shop owner. ‘He gave me a Chinese burn once and it really hurt. He wouldn’t let go – he just kept saying he could squeeze and squeeze and break my wrist if he wanted to and I think he would have, but my God – those eyes! He was a very good-looking man. He shouldn’t have taken that gun in where there were kiddies, I’m not saying that – but maybe he was just showing off again, a bit overexcited, like. Children use those BB guns all the time now – my own grandson shoots rats out the back barn when he comes to us. He loves it! It’d sting you, like, if one of the pellets caught you – but not hurt. Pain. . .
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